John Burciaga: A Rush to judgment

Friday

Jan 30, 2009 at 12:01 AMJan 30, 2009 at 1:54 PM

When a certain Mr. Limbaugh said of President Obama, “I hope he fails,” he was “Rush-ing” to save his radio audience and keep himself in the public eye. His long insistence that he is merely an “entertainer” is far too modest and, as such, so unlike him.

John Burciaga

When a certain Mr. Limbaugh said of President Obama, “I hope he fails,” he was “Rush-ing” to save his radio audience and keep himself in the public eye. His long insistence that he is merely an “entertainer” is far too modest and, as such, so unlike him.

Forget Al Franken, Limbaugh is the real comedian or, in truth, a bad joke. I have hurt so many feelings in the hometown that he and I share by calling him a “demagogue,” but for some reason, it’s okay in those parts to wish doom on the president, and thereby on all of us.

Our families knew each other, a la all small towns, and theirs was nice (a trait lost on Rusty, as he was called) and, yes, conservative (whereas he is somewhere to the Right of the Sheriff of Nottingham). Men in the family tended to law as a profession (Rusty excepted). Granddad Rush Sr. was a smallish man who practiced till his death at 102. Rush Jr. was a fighter pilot who, on squeezing from the cockpit, burgeoned to considerable proportions, as has Rusty, who was one of the few I didn’t know of.

By the time I left our river town, he was but 7 years old. I could tell by his voice on radio that he was a Limbaugh but was appalled at the nonsense he spewed and assumed it would come to naught. As time proved me wrong and I wrote a feature on him that led to a phone call with his wonderful mom, I asked her what she really thought when first hearing him on radio.

“I was shocked and embarrassed,” she admitted, and called him to say, “Rusty, your daddy and granddaddy were conservative, but they weren’t mean like you.”

In ancient times, demagogues were populists, but in these latter days have shrunk to Webster’s definition of those who use popular prejudices and false claims to gain power of sorts. That fits Rush, as it did one Father Charles Coughlin. The few of you who know of or remember Coughlin either were alive in that era, or take time to read a book once in a while, and that will be Rush’s fate as well. Meantime, he’ll take his money and run, since that’s the American Way, but there’s a lot of it to be lost if the political game changes enough to make him a dinosaur of the airwaves.

Fr. Coughlin led a Depression-era church near Detroit called the Shrine of the Little Flower. Don’t let that harmless-sounding moniker fool you: Like Rush, his Pentium-chip was out of whack, and he turned to schemes far from sweetness and light. I suggest that Limbaugh is taking pages from Coughlin’s book during this economic crisis.

Till now, Rush lived off the fat of the land – and fattened himself in the process while the GOP ruled, money flowed, and Rush’s supporters imagined he made it all happen. Silly them. They’re called “ditto-heads” for their blind allegiance; no one has told them that when two people think exactly alike, one of them isn’t thinking. Multiply that by their present number to arrive at a scary sum of mindlessness.

Coughlin took it as his mission in life to spit unholy venom at a popular new president who was quickly raising hopes amid the Great Depression none other than FDR – and, please note, familiar themes here, as history has an annoying tendency to repeat itself. The good Reverend demonized the New Deal and was expert at manipulating the rhetoric of hate and fear, thereby gaining a great hearing from those who most felt the economic pinch. Out of it sprang his infamous movement that had more clout than Rush and his minions could ever hope for.

Historians say that were it not for Roosevelt’s political mastery, Coughlin could have shaken the country off course in that election and left us in a sorry state to face Hitler and, later, Pearl Harbor.
Instead his party fell apart and Coughlin shuffled off to history’s junk heap.

A final note: Coughlin’s slogan was, “Roosevelt or Ruin.” Sounds a lot like Rush’s slap at Obama: “I hope he fails.”

Are you listening, Rusty? Of course not; he is rush-ing to judgment with his eye on his ratings.

John Burciaga lives in Newburyport, Mass., and writes on a variety of topics, including religion, politics and social issues.